Gaddafi believes Switzerland is "a world mafia and not a state," according to Time Magazine. So he submitted a proposal to the United Nations recommending that "the Italian-speaking part of the country should be returned to Italy, the German-speaking part to Germany and the French-speaking part to France."

The United Nations summarily ignored the dictator's proposal, on the quite sensible grounds that it "violates the U.N. Charter, which states that no member country can threaten the existence of another."

Gaddafi's battle with Switzerland seems to stem from the arrest and detention of his son and his son's wife by the Swiss police in Geneva, in July of 2008, on charges of allegedly beating two of their servants at a local hotel.

Time reports that "Gaddafi was so enraged by his son's two-day detention that he immediately retaliated by shutting down local subsidiaries of Swiss companies Nestlé and ABB in Libya, arresting two Swiss businessmen for supposed visa irregularities, canceling most commercial flights between the two countries and withdrawing about $5 billion from his Swiss bank accounts."